Ford Center's design, interior a modern take on city's history

Designers drew from Ohio River, local landmarks

This photo taken Oct. 4, 2011, shows the view from the suite level looking down on the main concourse of the Sixth Street side of the building of Ford Center.

ERIN McCRACKEN / COURIER &amp; PRESS
Corporations spent $50,000 a year for Ford Center suites, which had to be purchased with a three-year contract. The suites have access to their own food and bar services.

ERIN McCRACKEN / COURIER &amp; PRESS
The stadium bar is accessable to everyone in the Ford Center and will sell beer and wine. The bar area several televisions sets, some of the total 178 televisions throughout the arena. (October 4, 2010)

The Ohio River remains a defining characteristic of Evansville, both economically and culturally, its horseshoe bend literally shaping the city.

So it's little surprise that both the designers of Ford Center and the artist whose work will adorn it each found inspiration in the cradling curves of the river on their own.

Modern at first glance, with its composite aluminum panels and extensive use of glass, the new arena has its roots in the city's heritage and defining characteristics. Rising up from a sturdy limestone foundation, the curves of the arena's design are intended to reflect the lines of the river's horseshoe bend, said Gabe Braselton, project designer for Populous, the lead architectural firm working on the arena's design.

"We really wanted it to be of its time. Its design reflected looking to the future, the desire for growing Downtown, but there were also elements to keep it grounded in the past," Braselton said. "We wanted to combine these two ideas, respect the past and the future."

The river bend provided inspiration in several ways.

"We kind of saw the horseshoe bend as three separate curves," he said.

Those provided inspiration for the lines of the King Boulevard and Sixth Street sides while the horseshoe — or interior portion — of the river bend helped give shape to what Braselton called the upper bowl of the building.

But the designers also looked to other aspects of the region, finding inspiration in the limestone features of other notable Downtown buildings.

"We wanted to give the building a strong foundation with the limestone meeting the ground and that spirit comes through," Braselton said.

In fact, using limestone was almost a given, said Jeff Justice, an architect with Hafer Associates of Evansville, who worked with Populous on the building's exterior.

"That references our own state, our own community," Justice said.

Indiana limestone, quarried mostly in the south-central part of the state between Bloomington and Bedford, has long been known as a high quality construction material. It has been used in many local buildings, such as Vanderburgh County's Civic Center and Old Court House, as well as many nationally notable monuments and buildings, including the Empire State Building and the Pentagon.

However, other design elements such as the use of composite aluminum panels on the upper portions of its exterior are intentional steps away from Downtown's traditional brick and limestone.

"Just a duplication of what was Downtown really didn't make a statement about the future," Justice said. "This put Evansville in a position to say, 'We aren't stuck in the past, that this is a 21st century building.'"

Long, glassed-in portions of the concourses overlooking Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Sixth Street, as well as the towering glass lobby, work both ways, allowing those on the outside to get a sense of the excitement within and giving those inside a chance to see Evansville from a different perspective.

"This building will create a destination place for Downtown Evansville," Justice said.

With its location at the foot of Main Street, the arena also provided a chance to create something that will transition the city into Downtown.

"We are sort of making a gesture toward old Main Street with the plaza (at the arena entrance)," Braselton said.

With the riverfront anchoring the opposite end, Justice said, the arena will present both a challenge and opportunity to fill in between them, Justice said.

Sarah Schuler of VPS Architecture brought that same attention to concept and detail to the arena's interior. Key elements of Evansville's natural heritage carry through into the inside, inspired by the river and also the old-growth forest of Wesselman Woods Nature Preserve.

"It's about bringing the inside so it marries to the outside," she said.

An undulating wave pattern in the terrazzo floors of the lobby and concourses, and in the arrangements and coloring of the seat upholstery are a nod to the river's winding course. The blue terrazzo floor is made from recycled glass.

Wood also plays an important role. Huge, curving glue-laminate wood beams support the interior of the overhanging portion of the glassed-in concourse overlooking Sixth Street.

A bar on the main concourse level uses wood recycled from old barn beams for a rustic but refined look. The interior also makes use of space, with a use having been found for seemingly every nook and cranny, from hospitality rooms to storage.

The sculpture chosen to adorn the Ford Center's facade is designed to reflect that same sense of heritage and tie the new facility into Downtown.

Named "Vibrant River," the piece by California artist Roger Stoller will be 40 feet tall and 15 feet wide. A subcomittee for public art chose it from 43 submissions by artists from 20 states, including four from Indiana.

"The main thing we wanted was for it to be a focal point for the arena but also the entire city," said Rita Eykamp, who chaired the subcommittee.

The $200,000 price of the sculpture was included in the arena's construction cost.

Stoller visited Evansville for the first time in September to find out more about the community and see Ford Center in person.

"All I had seen up to this point was a rendering. I was really impressed with the physicality of it. It's a perfect palate for the artwork I'm planning," he said.

The sculpture will be mounted in such a way that it wraps around two of the arena's tower walls. However, renderings supplied by project architects only showed one of the walls, Stoller said, and used Photoshop to envision what the other wall may look like.

Seeing the arena in person brought his concept to life."It was like walking into this thing I had been imaging," he said. "It has kind of a majestic quality. It's always exciting to artwork for a building you admire."

In his early research for the project, Stoller viewed Evansville from space using Google maps. The horseshoe bend in the Ohio immediately caught his eye.

"It was here before Native Americans were here, before any of us were here," he said.

Stoller said he didn't know until later that architects also drew inspiration from the river bend.

The artist began his career as an industrial designer in Silicon Valley in the early 1980s before taking a leap of faith and following his heart into becoming a sculptor full-time.

In both fields, design and art, he has been influenced by his associations with renowned engineer, thinker and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller (whose grandchildren he grew up with) and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. When he was 21, before he even received a degree in design, Stoller traveled with Fuller and worked with him as personal assistant, helping create models of his designs and bring his creations to life.

Stoller said he draws creative inspiration from the geometric patterns found in nature. Vibrant River will have three levels of meaning, he said, starting with the horseshoe bend. Secondly will be a series of concentric rings circling out from the arena's location, signifying the ripples created by dropping a pebble in water or in this case, the arena in Downtown Evansville.

Finally, there will be third, more abstract layer that will include in its design nods to elements of local character.

Stoller said that he plans to begin the actual design work soon and once a contract is finalized he will begin actual construction of the piece, a process he estimates will take a little more than a year.